Growing Up on a Tightrope: Raising Black Boys

“(LA Times) Nationally, black teenage boys are five times as likely as white teen boys to be killed. In Los Angeles County, homicide accounts for two of every three deaths among young black men, compared with one in seven for whites, two in five for Latinos, and one in four for Asian Americans.”

“For middle- and upper-class black parents, the tightrope walk is different. Their neighborhoods may be safer, their schools integrated, their children sheltered. But steering their boys through adolescence means keeping them tethered to uncomfortable realities of race.”

“I know prep school kids who get approached and asked about the Crips and Bloods. Black kids are expected to reflect street culture…. That’s easy for a boy to buy into.”

TheStateOf . . . black boys. This article was insightful, especially the way it contrasted the not-so-similar plights of black middle class and lower class boys. The black American experience is this: while lower class boys are submerged in an often decadent culture with no real means of escape, middle class boys enjoy opportunity, yet also feel obligated to represent ghetto culture in order to be “authentic.” I think all middle class black males, including myself, have felt a wierd urge to represent the intimidating, brooding image of the ghetto honcho.